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A chill ran up the length of Richard’s spine, settling just at the base of his skull. The fingers of his right hand were slightly colder than his left, a side effect of the damaged nerves, still doing their best to recover.
Or so they said.
Echoes of the words reverberating around the ice sheet of his skull—dangerously thin in areas hidden beneath massive snowdrifts on every side. Maybe in a few months, they said. Maybe in a few months of hard therapy, he’d get some of it back. Back from the dead. Enough to hold a pen, perhaps even more.
More than a little bit of his treacherous heart fluttered at the news. Even if it was a long shot. Even if it tugged at his hair in all the wrong ways and made formerly quiet bones creak and muscles ache in ways he hadn’t felt in years.
“You’re pretty good at long shots,” words pressed to the back of his neck as Daniel had held him later that night. Pressed to the back of his scapula, with the smell of sex still lingering in the air. Fingertips rubbing along the dip his flesh where the muscles intersected. Leaving behind heat and starbursts of pain that Richard couldn’t help but press in against.
Grass, or something like it, only on its nametag, crunched under the soles of his shoes, a steady and measured crick-crackle as he made his way forward.
Ring in his pocket. A real deal metal ring. The engagement ring he’d purchased and had looped onto a chain. He’d traced the edges of it a thousand times already. Smooth, cool metal on the outside. Thin, shallow engraving within. It would be too risky for Danny to wear one on his hand—for no other reason than rings could get caught. Fingers lost. Metal could be heated nearly to the melting point and slip straight through, cauterizing flesh, impossible to remove once it was embedded in the bone.
Richard exhaled heavily, but the ghost of burning flesh in his sinuses clung like a stubborn tick.
Daniel’s nightmare had been bad last night, even as Richard had turned and tucked the hovering body in close to his chest, fighting against the snapped tethers of gravity. Richard could still feel Joshua’s fingers, blisters cracking and leaking watery yellow, inhumanly strong, digging into the meat of his ribcage, pulling himself open until the bones cracked and melted, steaming organs poured out. In the dream, Daniel had been trying to stuff the gooey mass back into the cavernous chest while Joshua laughed and jeered at him. The ichor stuck to his hands, burning to the bone. And still he kept struggling forward.
Doing anything he could because he knew that he had to.
The anniversary of Joshua’s death was rapidly approaching—and the discussions of the invite list hadn’t helped matters either. The idea of having Daniel’s family attend wasn’t even let in off the front porch, let alone entertained. But other names had been allowed inside, out of the rain, coats dripping and tracking mud on the carpet.
Some from both of their pasts. Which was. It wasn’t like Daniel was pressing for a big wedding, but it made sense that he would want some friends there. Made even more sense that he might try to find overlaps, people they both knew who might be willing to attend and even—ha, unlikely—support the union. Sentinel stood out like a sore thumb.
Something snapped beneath Richard’s foot. A dead stick, left desiccated by the wind and sun. Dead sticks, dead grass, dead. Not dead. Empty graves, up where there was a figure standing, backlit by the setting sun. Streams of light blocking their outline and hiding their face in shadow. Not that Richard needed light to know who it was; the steady heady thrum of static was more than enough.
“So,” and fought back a wince, feeling the word shatter the moment like a baseball through plate glass. Sharper than he wanted, but he had hoped he would be alone. Some unspoken thing in his mind carefully tucked itself into a corner and festered, scribbling profane graffiti on the walls. Always around. Always. It was hard to push back against it, the little bastard bit.
Too much of Richard’s mind managed the shove, though. Always around. And even through the bile bitter upswell at the back of his tongue, wasn’t there always the aftertaste of relief? Of gratitude. “Come here often?” Because coming here alone could have been a disaster. And now it wouldn’t be.
Ricardo’s shoulders only stayed tense for a moment before lowering back down, the expression he sent down the hill to greet Richard was the half cousin to guilt. Twice removed and married to embarrassment. Not a full smile. Not a full exhale either, but the lines were softening, if one knew where to look.
“Not as much as I used to,” eyebrows lifting as Ricardo turned those eyes of his back to the headstone. The bare knuckled honesty of it threatened to punch Richard in the throat, nevermind how convincing the humorous tattoos on its forearms were.
Not as much as he used to. Because Richard had come back into his life. Because he.
How often had Ricardo come in the past?
How many trips did he make to the graveside of Sidestep after Richard had reinserted himself?
He’d always. Had he always been a sentimental idiot? Yes. More than once then. Probably more than twice. The mental image of Ortega—stripped of the Marshal trappings and not Ricardo yet, the in between and agonizingly distant Ortega—standing by the empty graves of two people whose real names weren’t engraved on the stones that remembered them, stuck like a kernel in the back of Richard’s mouth. Had he always come alone? A stupid question, who would have…had he been drunk? Had he…don’t. Don’t wonder about things you already know, Richard Abekket, you’ve got plenty you don’t know without adding to it.
It wasn’t that long ago that the image would have made that certain special something, undulating and slick, hack and wheeze in his soul. Or snicker louder. It wasn’t fully gone, but it had been shuffled back and away to live on the outskirts of town, scrounging what it could, while it could. Until it was needed again. Knowing it would be needed again. It wasn’t able to sink its teeth into this before Richard pulled it back out towards the surface.
It broke through thin ice at the same time as Richard’s hand settled itself on Ricardo’s back.
“Did….do you want a second alone?” movement under his palm. Under the fabric of the jacket and the shirt beneath, the steady thrum of Ricardo’s mods felt muted. Miles away. But strong all the same. Leaning back into the touch, thank god.
“Hm? Nah. No, I’m fine,” rubbing firmly enough over his mouth to send a streak of pale running away from the rush of blood in his lips. Nipping at its heels. The smile that followed was faked. Badly. Shallow at the edges and too tight across the middle.
How many inches did they say it took to drown in?
Not many. More than enough.
There was an instrument of filament glass somewhere deep in the sinew of Richard’s musculature, cutting in at all the perfect angles. His right hand felt clumsy as it raised up from his back to rest on Ricardo’s shoulder. Letting whatever silence was growing between them start testing out its new legs.
“Did you change your hair?” Ricardo tripped the silence before it could really manage a jog. Something too clenched in how softly the question was asked. Richard blinked over at him while his brain tried to switch gears without jamming anything.
“Not really, Danny got me some new products for it,” Why was there a pause in his voice?
“It looks good,” Probably because of that pause in Ricardo’s. In the way his eyes seemed to hit the smoother curl over Richard’s ear and then slide off. Down. Back to the gravestone. Part of him wanted to offer to come back entirely. To let Ricardo have whatever moment he was having without invading even more.
But. Who would he be, if he didn’t muscle into every private space of everyone he loved?
That thought was sat at the back of the classroom and asked to write an essay about just why he should have to leave. They were standing at his grave, after all. Practically like being in his apartment.
“I saw An…Hope,” stumbling only for half a second on the name change. “Changed their hair,” not even small talk. Minutiae talk. Needling little speck talk. It needled between his vertebrae. “They’re looking good. They said you helped them get a new apartment,” not a hint of humor in the voice, not the real stuff. Whatever was in his head…
“Ricardo?” the voice was too heavy—too obviously groping for the sort of topics that would normally be discussed at water coolers by people who forgot one another’s first names.
“They came by headquarters last week,” conversational. Light. Like they weren’t both perched above empty coff--. Did they bury coffins here? Put anything into the ground or just erect a monument? He’d never thought to ask and now Ricardo was talking to him like they’d run into each other in the grocery store. “Wish you’d been there. You should have seen Wei’s face when he realized who it they were, you would—,”
“Ricardo,”
“Alright,” a hand came up and waved listlessly as if dismissing something from his head. Probably how reproachful Richard’s tone of voice was. Richard couldn’t name the expression taking over Ricardo’s face. Exasperation was the closest, dosed heavily with the way the corners of his eyes creased down at the edges. He closed his eyes for a little too long.
“Why are you here?” trying not to make it an accusation.
“Why are you here?” not cruel, but Ricardo didn’t extend the same courtesy of avoiding verbal finger pointing, the question clearly poised on his tongue from the moment Richard’s head popped up over the curve of the hill.
“I asked you first,” reaching for that line to try and twist it into a more playful shape. “And I’m not looking for a fight,”
“I was here first,” a small curve upward at the corner of his mouth, even as he turned his head away. Back down. One foot moving forward to nudge a clump of dead grass to one side, weight shifting firmer to Richard’s hand. Closer in towards him. “Neither am I,”
“Fair,” Richard folded, setting down his cards face up for the world to see how badly he’d been bluffing. Three of hearts, two of diamonds, jack of clubs. Ace of hearts, but he’d lost the other ace up his sleeve weeks ago. Along with his sleeve. Left with a very sad looking Queen of spades. Even worse than Ricardo, even if neither of them were playing with full decks. “I came to talk to myself,”
Ricardo took that answer without a word, eyebrows furrowing for half a moment before getting under control. “What about?”
It was his own turn to shrug. To let the question slip over him, looking for an unblocked entrance. For the opening in the armor. Ruined armor, now. Ah, beans, he needed to talk with Doctor Mortum. Richard felt the fabric of the suit jacket, expensive and smooth, wrinkling under his palm as he rubbed it down along Ricardo’s spine. Back up to the nape of his neck where it flattened itself out to rest on his shoulder.
As if he needed the touch to reassure himself that Ricardo was there.
At least it didn’t seem to bother him. “Not sure. All of it?” Vague but the grittier details were too busy trying to act like they weren’t at home. Richard forced the door open all the same, biting his lip in the process. “What does anyone talk about when they talk to their own grave?” too much spite there. Strychnine in the saliva pooling in his mouth that made his throat burn to swallow. “Beyond wishing that they’d done things differently and hadn’t ended up dead,”
Ricardo rose to the bait. Thank God. Beautiful asshole that he was. “What would you have changed? Told me sooner?” Trusted me? All but asked, Richard could see his lips moving to form the words, even if the ones he actually said didn’t match. Like when a movie was dubbed over badly from a foreign language. “Asked for help?”
“For starters,” hand slipping down over his back and without thinking, tangled his fingers in against the pulse and flicker of the mods embedded in Ricardo’s fingers.
“Would…would you have told me how you felt back then?”
“Probably not,” No dulling the edge on that one. Richard could feel the cut slicing somewhere deep and flinchy. Neither one of them needed to specify. If this conversation had been a year ago…It could have been telling Ortega about Sidestep’s fleeting crush on him, even though only blind and deaf and dumb Marshal Charge had missed the signs that Sidestep thought he was hiding so well. If he had really missed them in the first place. But it wasn’t a year ago. And too much had changed. No, both of them knew it was about how terrifying that mind of Ortega’s could be.
Would you have told me that you were afraid of me? “Do you wish I would have?”
Somewhere overhead a gull, lost on a rising current, briefly filled the air with its calls. Far away from home. “No. I don’t think I would have been ready to hear it back then. To handle it right,” a note of something related to pain, ground out of existence as Ricardo squeezed Richard’s hand in his own.
“Alright. Your turn, why were you here?”
“Talking to…,” to you. Who you used to be. Who I thought you used to be. Not. Not ‘who I wish you still were’, but that was still an option. Richard doubted it would ever stop being a button in his head, waiting for the right finger to press it down. You’ve changed, and you’ve changed too much, and now…Now, whoever you are is too different from who you were, and it’s all my fault.
“Did I say anything good?”
“Do you ever?” teasing, or as close to it as it could get, what with the restraining order and all.
“Sometimes,” it was a mild protest, but there was enough humor there to keep whatever was threatening to push out Richard’s teeth pull back into his mouth. “Not often, but yeah, sometimes I make good points.” A pause. A long enough pause that several people in the audience began wondering if this meant it was intermission. “I tend to make better ones in person, though,”
Ricardo snorted, mouth twisting down heavily enough to make him turn slightly away. “I don’t know about that. You’ve said some,” a hard stop.
Ah.
So. He came often enough to chat with the grave for it to have its own voice? How often was it cruel to him? How often was it kind? “It doesn’t matter. Anything that made you start feeling sentimental enough that talking to your empty casket would make for a good afternoon?” trying to take the focus off of himself, but Richard could let it slide.
“Doctor Finch knows who I…was,” eyes drawn like stubborn weights by that magnetism of his own. His. Sidestep’s grave. And for the first time since he’d gotten there, Richard’s eyes finally began speaking to his brain and pointing out there were flowers there. New ones, still in their sickly green, crinkling plastic.
Ah, beans.
Mourning the dead friends that he’d failed to save.
Mourning the undead, one of whom had strolled up and.
What exactly had his mind imagined Richard would say to him? Living or dead.
“Really?” mustache twisting with a follow up profanity. “Meirda, I swear I didn’t tell her anything about Sidestep,”
Hm. Implying he may have said other things to her? Paranoia that pulled at the corners of his lips. Richard swallowed it but could already feel it climbing up the back of his esophagus to make itself a home in the hollow nooks and crannies of his skull.
“It’s alright,” lying through his teeth and plain enough for Ricardo to let out a half laugh about it. “I would have felt it in her head, if you had. She,” a milder pause, less deciding what to say and more how to say it. “She doesn’t shield well,
“Does she know that you’re,” trailing off down an unmarked path that led to a short stop and a sudden drop. Anything could have been waiting at the bottom of that cliff; Richard let Ricardo squirm for a moment while that sentence’s end drew closer and closer. It remained unfinished as Ricardo tapped the center of his own chest, not a squirm in sight. Right where the barcode was on Richard’s own.
He felt his jaw moving more than his brain responding. “Nope,”
“Are you gonna tell her?”
“Nope,” a smaller smile on Ricardo’s face tried to make Richard’s lift with it. “I trust her not to tell anyone, but I don’t trust that she can keep it hidden,” he said evenly, hand tensing in Ricardo’s and feeling those fingers tighten in response. “Not that she would need to keep it for long. The information we got Mia,”
Most of Regina’s personal and professional emails. Spreadsheets. Even a presentation for the future allocations of funds. Everything about the core that Richard reasonably thought could be shared. Thought might be worth the world knowing about. “Well. Soon enough secret keeping isn’t going to be that big of an issue,”
“Are they still the biggest threat?” finally, finally turning to face him, face betraying just how well he knew the answer to his own question. Folding even further when he saw whatever expression was currently freeloading on Richard’s face. “Bigger than what Senator Carmichael is up to?” a bad lead in. Shit.
“What’s happened?”
“She’s demanding that Herald and I step down and that Marshal Steel be replaced,” no mention of Lady Argent, though. Was she not a suspect? He knew that it wasn’t likely that Ricardo or Danny had said anything. And Chen had been nothing less than a full slap to the face with how willing he was to keep secrets and work off the books. But there had been too many chances of slipped words and caught glances for her to not know something was up.
Ah, beans, that was going to be a rough conversation.
“Did she give any names or is she just stomping her feet?” Senator Carmichael was an easier target, at least.
“Only accusations for now. She says she has proof we’ve killed innocents, but apparently when asked who it was and what motive we had, she went quiet,” even easier then. To insinuate that the war hawk was power hungry and bloodthirsty was even easier than convincing people that taxes were communist propaganda. To tip that needle into her making baseless allegations against the rangers in order to install her own lackeys would barely take any pressure. Just in the right places and this could be dismissed.
It almost made Richard giddy. Almost.
“They probably need time to sort out if it’s someone that they wanted the rangers to kill in the first place,” which earned a stern frown that Richard ignored. Let him be moody about it, Ricardo knew that the rangers could be glorified attack dogs when the situation called for it. “So, yeah. Bigger than her, still. They’ll have already replaced Regina as program director, if they’ve figured out how to deal with the Catastrofiend long enough to set up that particular line of succession,”
Even with his nerves misfiring and the signals from his brain being jumbled along the way, it would have taken a truly dead piece of meat to miss the tremble in Ricardo’s hand at the mention of the monster.
“Richard.” Bedrock. Harder than bedrock. Severe and thick in the air. “How does this end?” and now the gaze was anything but welcome, Ricardo’s eyes boring holes into the side of Richard’s temple. As if, if he only stared hard enough, he could crack the mind beside him wide open and wade in deep. “I know how you wanted it to end,” Suicide by cop. Suicide by farm hands. Not options anymore. Not with Danny and Ricardo. Not with Regina dead. Anathema back. “Are you going to keep--,” a muffled curse again.
“Keep being Mad Dog?” he supplied, watching Ricardo’s grimace spread into his neck. Hackles rising. A good guess then. “We both know I can’t go back to…,”
“To being a hero?” Ah. There it was. Like the flick of a safety coming off for both of them. Another bullet loaded into the waiting gun. “To being--,”
“To being Sidestep?” His shoulders were creeping up even higher. Voice trying to climb into a scream, held back by the rotting. Not rotting, not decaying, fresh fingers of a different man punching up through the soil of his heart. “Sidestep is dead, and I never was a hero, Ricardo. I did what I could to help, but I was a vigilante. I was your sidekick, not a--,”
“Right? You were more than my goddamn sidekick and you know it. Following my lead, and where did I lead you?” half shouting, the nearly shaking finger jabbed straight down at their feet. “I don’t want you to be Sidestep again, but for fuck’s sake, we can’t keep acting like what you’re doing isn’t because you want to help people,” another shot. Harder on the trigger. Empty. “I listened to you on that plane. Telling that woman that it’s worth it to run, to fight back. You spent the whole time trying to save her,”
“What was I supposed to do? Besides, I’m pretty sure declaring open war on a government agency doesn’t qualify as heroism,” keeping his voice steady. Failing. The quaver was there and not only moving in but picking out new wallpaper. Settling hideously on paisley and pasting it on to his ribs.
“It does if the agency is as fucked up as,” speaking over one another.
“All of them are as fucked up as,” barely registering when the hand in his started clenching tight enough to send the knuckles white. “Just in different ways,” The other hand clenched just as tightly. Desperately. “If you’re going to call me a hero for what I’m doing, I’ll call you a villain and we can be even,” dripping with sarcasm. Childish. Effective.
A nerve struck. A hammer dropping down.
A loaded chamber. A bright buzz that made Richard’s arm tingle in latent pain. Muscles tensing. Not enough to really hurt. Enough to register the small slip.
“This is such bullshit,” teeth clenched hard. Clenched with something besides the argument. Staring down that thin line of semantics and morality that had a nasty habit of twisting in and over on itself like a dying snake.
“It is,” easy enough to agree to, feeling his anger flattening out to a thin layer. Freshly fallen and white as snow. White as lightning. Sighing out like the north wind had commandeered his lungs. “Hey.”
“What?”
“Not in a hospital this time,” an awful joke, but out of place enough to make the sigh out of Ricardo’s lungs slightly lighter. Not ending somewhere worse than it could. “I don’t know how it ends,” the admission startling himself a little too much. “It….I never planned on dealing with the aftermath of it,” Why would he need to? Every path he’d laid and every step he’d taken had been with one end in sight. And now that end was nowhere he could reach anymore.
“Well. At least this time you don’t have to make those plans alone,”
“Are you offering to help me plot my next villainous escapade?” Said with a sneer that curled at the edges.
“Fuck off, Richie,” squeezing his hand all the same.